The subject matter and content of audio and video productions varies greatly. In addition, to this variety there is, correspondingly, a considerable quantity of such audio and video productions. The quantity has been required to meet the demand from the broadcast and entertainment industries. The audio productions include, for example, radio broadcasts, both live and pre-recorded, musical and audio recordings, whereas video productions include, for example, films, television programs and video recordings. As will be appreciated typically video productions also include an accompanying sound track or commentary, so that an audio production is inherently included as part of the video production.
The term audio and/or video will be used herein to refer to any from of audio information or signals, video information or signals, or a combination of video and audio information or signals. The term audio/video will be used for short to refer to audio and/or video.
As a result of the great variety and considerable quantity of audio/video productions, the task of locating particular content items of audio/video material within an archive of audio/video productions represents an arduous and labour intensive task, because an operator must visually search the audio/video productions for the desired content item. Furthermore, because of the length of audio/video productions which are typically although not exclusively stored on linear recording media, the task of navigating through the media to locate particular content items of audio/video material from an audio/video production is time consuming and labour intensive.
In our co-pending UK patent application number GB 9921235.9 there is disclosed a method and apparatus for navigating through the content of audio/video material using metadata which represents the content of the audio/video material.
The term metadata as used herein refers to and includes any form of information or data which serves to describe either the content of audio/video material or parameters present or used to generate the audio/video material or any other information associated with the audio/video material. Metadata may be, for example, “semantic metadata” which provides contextual/descriptive information about the actual content of the audio/video material. Examples of semantic meta data are the start of periods of dialogue, changes in a scene, introduction of new faces or face positions within a scene or any other items associated with the source content of the audio/video material. The metadata may also be syntactic metadata which is associated with items of equipment or parameters which were used whilst generating the audio/video material such as, for example, an amount of zoom applied to a camera lens, an aperture and shutter speed setting of the lens, and a time and date when the audio/video material was generated. Although meta data may be recorded with the audio/video material with which it is associated, either on separate parts of a recording medium or on common parts of a recording medium, meta data in the sense used herein is intended for use in navigating and identifying features and essence of the content of the audio/video material, and may, therefore be separated from the audio/video signals when the audio/video signals are reproduced. The meta data is therefore separable from the audio/video signals.
The apparatus and method for navigating through the content of audio/video material disclosed in the co-pending UK patent application number GB 9921235.9 uses the meta data which has been generated with the audio/video signals to navigate through the items of contextual or essence information of the audio/video material.
In a further co-pending UK patent application number 9921234.2 there is disclosed an editing system for editing source content such as audio/video material to produce an edited audio/video production by applying a template representative of a desired production style to meta data associated with the audio/video material to form the production. Again the meta data must be generated with the audio/video material in order for the editing system to form the audio/video production.